The End Is Where We Start From
by thecolouryes
Summary: He has been cooped up too long without his medication or anything to feed on. When his captors present him a broken body, he lunges at the chance to feed before he recognises who would be his last meal. M for violence, sexual scenes, and some language.
1. Chapter 1

**The End Is Where We Start From**

**Summary:  
><strong>_**He has been cooped up too long without his medication or anything to feed on. When his captors present him a broken body, he lunges at the chance to feed before he recognises who would be his last meal. **_

**M for violence, sexual scenes, and some language.**

**Disclaimer: The angst-whore muse is all mine. Everything you recognise from Sanctuary is not. The title is a quote from the last episode of Torchwood season 2.**

**A/N: I'm really sorry about this. I didn't mean for my Teslen-day fic to be so mean. (Sorry for the pun.) Of course, as with all of my writing that handles difficult topics, I happen to like the way this turned out probably a little too much...**

**Happy Teslen Day, and I hope the rest of what you read to celebrate isn't so whumpy.**

**Chapter One (2484 words)**

He hasn't had his medication in far too long.

He doesn't know how long it's been; when he gets like this, time loses much of its sense, its meaning, its importance. When he hasn't had his medication for _this_ long, and he hasn't fed in even longer, it is all his rational mind can do to keep his body from taking the sustenance it needs from the first source it can find.

When a wall of his impenetrable prison slides away to reveal another such prison, the size of his own, his powerful nose picks up the delicious scent of his first meal in far, far too long. The scent is overwhelmingly wonderful, taunting his taste buds with the promise of ecstasy.

In a fluid movement, he crosses to the prey they have revealed to him. She is sitting on a chair, bruised, burned, and bloodied, completely unresponsive, and naked. She has a long gash up her left thigh, from which blood still drips, out around her wrongly-skewed kneecap, down the length of a well-toned calf, and pooling in the curve of her foot. Her right thigh is a series of shorter, horizontal, and no longer bleeding cuts. Judging by the rather small volume of blood pooling around each of them, they are not much deeper than superficial. Her arms are another matter entirely. She has a myriad of burns, ranging in size from the tip of a knife to what could be nothing other than a small cup of boiling wax poured down her right shoulder, which stopped dripping a bit less than halfway down her upper arm. The wax is still covering the area, though it has long since cooled and hardened. In addition, it seems she was struggling more with her arms: the ropes her captors used to restrain her have made much more noticeable red welts on her wrists and elbows than they did on her ankles. Her stomach and chest have been badly bruised; her lower abdomen is deeply black and blue, her breathing seems laboured as if her ribs have been damaged and have run into her lungs, and her breasts are the inhuman shade of bruises about to form and spotted with bright red welts. Her hair is matted and stringy and dangling in front of her face, hiding her from his view.

The only reaction he can have to this horrific scene is, _Good, she'll be easy to take._

Rather than let perfectly reasonable blood go to waste, he kneels between her outstretched legs and slowly licks the blood from her right leg. It is, as the mere scent has promised, ecstasy in taste. She tastes like a fine wine and a hearty meal, and he savours every moment that he can of her blood on his lips and his tongue, satisfying his hunger like nothing else could or ever would. There is no reaction to his tongue sliding over the surface of her calf, or her knee, but when his tongue hits the open wound of her thigh, her breath hitches almost imperceptibly, even to him, and he finds himself privately remarking on the remarkably sexual nature of his stronger side – something he never noticed, he reasons with himself, because he made a silly vow never to feed on a human. Silly, rash, and, truth to be told, against his very nature – and he can't even remember what possessed him to do such a thing.

He turns his head to clean the pool of blood on her other leg, and as he passes her pussy, he gets a half-whiff of old fucks and remembers, suddenly, a long, _long _time ago in this prison, the half-muffled whisper of a woman screaming "No!" somewhere very far away. "Oh, my dear," he murmurs in the rough, deep voice of his stronger side, in between slow licks of his tongue across her thigh, "Someone has been very naughty, haven't we?"

She moves a little as he does and says this, mumbling something that even to his ears is indecipherable. He smirks at her skin – it's the mad rambling of someone nearly dead – and moves his head up to her neck, his fangs bared, her head already lolling to her right, and leans in for her blood.

Then, she manages to get out a single word: "Nikola..."

He freezes, and every moment of the last few minutes replays in his mind with agonising slowness before his mind is clear enough for him to see what's in front of him. The small amount of her blood and the reawakening of the very human part of him have returned him to his less threatening state: fangs and claws retreated, irises returned to their usual blue-grey, fear for her and disgust at himself rampant in his expression.

He brushes the dark, stringy strands of hair away from her face and nearly cries. It's her. It's his oldest friend, his closest ally, his would-be lover.

She was going to be his next meal.

Suddenly, the wounds which were nothing but good business to his darker side terrify him. The fear more than overtakes his bloodlust. Here she is, his Helen, and she is going to die. She is more than near enough to it.

"Helen," he whispers, brushing the hair out of her face and tucking it more securely behind her ears. "Please, Helen, look at me."

She opens her eyes, but he can see that it takes a great effort. She attempts a smile, and even if it hadn't turned into a grimace of pain, it would not have been a pretty sight: A jagged scar cuts along one cheekbone, down below her nose, and almost vertically across her lips. It is dripping blood into her mouth.

He wants to cry, but after so long denying himself the luxury, the tears won't come.

She looks into his eyes, the desperation and the pleading more than rampant in them, and croaks out two words that break his heart: "Fuck me."

He wants to say no. He wants to tell her she doesn't have the strength. He wants to promise to fuck her when she's better. He wants to tease her about it. He wants to say _anything_, but he can't, because he knows why she's saying it, and he doesn't want to admit the very real possibility of that.

So, instead of the rough-and-tumble half-teasing manner he wants to adopt, he is deathly serious and blinking away tears that won't even do him the justice of leaving his eyes. And he doesn't obey her. He doesn't fuck her.

He makes long and beautiful love to her.

He knows that, really, he doesn't have the time to worship her body like he is. He needs to try even harder now to get them out of here, because _she_ needs to live. If she doesn't live, there's no reason for him to live. But he can't think about that – he can only think about what he's doing, what he has to do. He is trying not to cry as he licks every last drop of spilled blood from her body so that she will be clean and loved, as he lightly presses his lips to every sore or cut or scrape or bruise or slight source of pain to her. His last stop is the cut across her cheek, the one that ends in her lips, which part willingly under his own. He kisses her, and the taste is the most perfect thing he has ever tasted: It is utterly and unmistakeably his Helen, her love and her tongue and her blood and the tears _she_ is able to cry slipping down her cheeks and mixing with their mouths.

And when they break apart, gasping for air, she whispers, even more desperately than before, "Please, Nikola. Fuck me."

He doesn't want to, because he knows if nothing else, this will break her, but he cannot resist her incessant pleading. So he sheds the suit he is, out of habit, still wearing, and lays it as a slight comfort on the ground. He lifts her up, slowly, horrified to see the deep ruts of a hard whipping on her back, and, carefully as he can, lays her down on the makeshift bed. He slides into her slowly, one hand guiding his cock, the other supporting him without putting any unnecessary weight on her. She is tight, and he fills her well, the pleasure nearly filling his body to the bursting and, from her expression, certainly overriding her own pain. He takes it softly at first, wanting to keep her from additional pain for as long as possible, but with her hips responding so naturally to his and the way they fit with one another and how long he has waited for this moment, his body moves faster though his mind feebly tries to tell him not to and the climax is coming so soon, and then, finally, after waiting for so long, he is spilling himself into her.

He moves his arms to the side of her head and leans forward on them for a moment while he catches his breath. She has the most angelic smile on her scarred face, and she leans her head up slightly to press her lips to his. "Thank you," she whispers quietly, the hitch in her voice betraying her fear.

As he sits up, he pulls out of her and then lifts her up gently so that she can sit in his lap while he leans against the wall for support.

"Nikola," she murmurs, leaning against his shoulder.

"Helen," he answers as comfortingly as he can muster to the dying woman in his arms.

"When I–" her breath hitches, and she takes a moment to gather her courage. "When I die, please take my blood."

He frowns at her. "It doesn't work like that," he says softly. "That won't bring you back."

She nods slowly. "I know."

They exchange a long and meaningful look, and he understands. She wants him to make it out alive, even if she won't.

The tears are sliding down her face freely as she says, finally, "I love you, Nikola."

They return to his eyes, too, even if they still won't do him the justice of falling. "I love you, too, Helen. I always have, and I always will."

Her lower lip quivering, she nods, her heart finally at peace, and leans into his chest. With one arm around his neck for support, the fingers of her other hand intertwined with his, and she listens to the sound of his immortal heart beating. "Tell me a story," she whispers so softly it takes all of his vampiric awareness to pick up on it.

Closing his eyes, he plants one soft kiss on the crown of her head, leans his cheek against the spot, and speaks.

"One day, in the late 1800s," his story begins, mustering a half-teasing tone that tries to lighten the mood of what would otherwise be a deathly serious situation; "a young Serbian had come to greatest Britain there ever was, to learn things that would change his life at the posh Oxford University. So far, however, all he had learned was that the British were a little too fond of their tea and not all that interesting giving lectures. Then, someone changed that for him. She was pretty, but she was more importantly smart, and _most_ importantly shared the view that no one at that silly university knew the first thing about giving a lecture. Lectures were supposed to be _fun_, and _inventive_, and _informative_ – not that she would necessarily follow her own advice when she got around to being the one giving the lectures – but it was certainly a good point over which these two outsiders could bond. They shared a love of science, and the unusual, and though neither were smart enough to admit it at the time, each other.

"One day, they discovered a very rare, untainted sample of blood from the original vampires. What luck! What magical, unknown properties this rare substance could have! So, being the rash and headstrong youth that they were, they injected themselves with this substance, each taking a small portion of the whole. The young Serb became a vampire. His smart, pretty friend gained immortality, and a sudden inclination of something she had to do. So, once she had overcome the painful acclimation of her ability, as had he, she did that which she had always meant to do: She kissed him, and she told him she loved him, and he assured her his feelings were the same, and they took on the future, hand-in-hand, happy in the knowledge that, even without anything else, they would always have one another."

By the end of his tale, the tears have finally been released from their invisible prison and are pouring down his face in torrents and splashing unnoticed onto the relaxed and lifeless face of the woman in his arms. He knew the instant she died, but couldn't interrupt his story. The tears began to fall, but some part of his mind knew that she wanted him to finish his story, that some part of her soul lingered on to hear the ending.

He sits in this awful prison, sobbing his heart out, for longer than he wants to admit. He is thoroughly spent by the time his breathing subsides to normal. If there were ever a time for him to welcome the thought of sleep, this would be it. If there were ever a time for him to welcome the thought of death, even to _try_ for it, this would be it. True, weak, cowardly, human death. He wants it more than he wanted anything before. More than he wanted to be turned back into a vampire. More than he wants Helen to be alive and well.

She has been lifeless in his arms for so long, and he remembers all too well the moment when that tiny spark of life left her, when the faint strength holding her muscles together relaxed, since when he has been left with a limp body cradled to his chest in the hopes that his love will somehow resuscitate her.

And he knows it's foolish. He knows it was her last request. He knows two more tiny pinpricks will hardly show up on the bruised and battered body he's clutching like a lifeline. But, no matter what he tells himself, he can't convince himself to feed on her. If he lasts too much longer, here, his darker self will certainly feed from her, but until that becomes a threat, he will sit here, clutching her to his heart, as the last dredges of life slip from her broken body and into the peace of oblivion.


	2. Chapter 2

**The End Is Where We Start From**

**Disclaimer: The angst-whore muse is all mine. Everything you recognise from Sanctuary is not. The title is a quote from the last episode of Torchwood season 2.**

**A/N: Sorry it took so long to get this up. I had to wait for my beta, T-man626, to send me back the first and latest chapters before I put it up.**

**This one is not nearly as violent, and would be rated at a K+ level only for a bit of violence. It also addresses the original prompt that I was working off of, which was about connecting Helen and Nikola needing to feed.**

**Please enjoy this rather less visually hard-to-take though still (in my mind) nearly as heart-breaking scene.**

**Chapter Two (1511 words)**

He hears a wall slide back, the impenetrable prison suddenly exposed to the world. He can't move. They know what he is, and if they have found a way to kill him, he will welcome it. He will not put up the slightest fight if they come to hurt him, but he _will not_ let them take the body in his arms.

"I need a med team to my location STAT!" hisses a somewhat-familiar voice. He shakes his head, even as he hears the crackling response of an affirmative over the radio.

Whoever has opened the door to his prison hurries over to the crouching, half-mad vampire. When she is well within human hearing distance, he tells her, annunciating clearly, "No."

"Nikola?" she asks softly. Unable to bear it any longer, he looks up to see who this intrusive presence is.

It's one of the children.

His mind struggles for a moment to remember her name.

"Kate," he whispers. The absolute shock at the vampire's state is clearly evident on her face, which is, to his surprised, filled with genuine concern. He didn't think they cared. "She's gone."

The tears, he notices, are much quicker to come to her face than they were to either his or Helen's. They're spilling down her cheeks as she impulsively hugs him around the neck, taking care not to displace the woman in his arms. She picks up his coat from the floor, and wraps it around her boss's body, which she manages to pry from his grip with a small bit of coaxing.

While she is supporting the remarkable weight of the woman part of her refuses to acknowledge is dead, Nikola pulls on the rest of his clothes. They are blood-stained, from her back, but they had already been torn and stained and written off, in his head, as a total loss.

The med team Kate had desperately called for arrives as he is taking back his love. Kate shakes her head sadly at them, but they still – foolishly – provoke the vampire into a minor tiff about who will bring her body out of the hellhole where she saw her last moments. He bares his fangs and snaps at them, then falters; it seems what little strength he gained so long ago from her blood is leaving him. Thankfully, the movement is too small for the weak eyes of the humans in front of him to pick up on, and he brushes past them and down the corridor running next to the cell.

He doesn't want to know what horrors are hidden behind each of these further doors they pass, what heart-breaking acts of violence his captors have subjected others to. He simply walks forward, up, out. Away from the hell and the death and people who will ask questions.

He walks without asking directions, his internal magnet feeling the steel structure of the building, providing a more accurate map than any of Wolf-boy's scanning equipment could. In the back of his mind, where he's not paying attention to it, he can hear someone calling, "Hey, Vlad, wait, we haven't secured that exit yet!"

He gets so far through the maze of corridors that he almost forgets that the exit isn't "secure" until a bullet whizzes past his ear. And then another. His magnetism is telling him that, in order to get out, he must cross through a large lobby, with an upper balcony perfect for raining gunfire down on him. Weak as he is, he cannot press on through the pain of a gunshot wound, even though it won't kill him.

After retracing his steps for a few metres, he lays Helen's body in a small alcove. The tears roll down his cheeks again as he whispers to her lifeless form, "Forgive me."

Then, he slips his fangs into the bared expanse of her neck, and drinks. He is so delirious with need that he imagines her blood is still warm, a belief that comes only secondarily as he's relishing the sweet, strong, overwhelmingly intoxicating taste of her blood.

He comes nowhere close to draining her, but feels far stronger for the restrained amount of blood he has taken. It's given him the strength that he needs to kill every murdering bastard that took away his only reason for living.

He lets himself slide into his full vampire power, eyes, ears, nose, and magnetism alert for every movement. There are stairs through a door to the right of where he was nearly shot, stairs that lead to the balcony and the shooters. He slips silently through the door, up the stairs, through a short expanse of corridor, and behind the first man positioned to take him down.

He slides up behind the man and pulls him deep into the shadows, breaking his neck before he can make a sound. So he continues through the next two men, but his fourth victim makes a cry before his death, and the others lock in on his location and begin firing blindly.

Nikola can barely feel the bullets as his immortal body instinctively pushes the ones that have lodged inside him back out. He continues killing men: slicing with his claws, bearing his fangs for effect, brushing off the shots as if they were nothing. The onslaught of attack lasts far longer than he would like it to. None of these men are smart enough to flee the sight of an enraged vampire.

He makes quick work of them, and then returns to the hidden alcove for Helen's body. With his coat hiding most of the horrible wounds that mar her appearance, her expression makes it almost appear that she is peacefully sleeping. He scoops her into his arms, something he has always wanted to do but never even dared to _fear_ would ever be in this situation. He holds her close, and keeps walking, across the lobby which became a bloodbath, through a few more corridors, and out into the daylight for the first time in an immeasurable while.

When his eyes adjust to the sunlight, he sinks down on his knees and the tears stream down his cheeks in torrents. So many cars, so many people, so much help to save them. To save her, the woman in his arms, who they were too late to save.

Suddenly, a huge, hairy hand is pulling on his shoulder. "Up," grunts a familiar voice. "We're going home."

The vampire nods and follows blindly, mentally reduced to a child. He is led to a van, and he curls up in one of the seats with Helen in his arms. Bigfoot gets in the driver's seat and takes them back to the Old City Sanctuary. It's a few hours' drive, but Nikola isn't thinking, and the time doesn't feel like anything. He simply lets himself be led, lets himself be told to put Helen on a hospital bed in the infirmary, lets himself be given a shot of his medication, lets himself be fed the cocktail of animal blood that tastes nothing like the sweet bouquet of Helen's blood. He doesn't let go of Helen's hand until he is shoed out of the room altogether, and then he simply wanders the corridors of the Sanctuary aimlessly.

With a mind of their own, his feet take him to a door he knows well. He steps into the room he has seen a few times before, the room that is waiting for a return it will never see.

He lies down on her bed, his clothes sticky with dried blood and tears and sweat, and closes the curtains around him. His eyelids, too, drift shut, and he begins to contemplate ways he might die.

His mind keeps going back to the blasted De-Vamper, which is in his lab, and of course has been re-configured so that he could never again accidentally use it on himself. But he can change that, undo the safety measure, return to the torment of a mortal soul and end his life as a weakling. Or, perhaps, he could alter it altogether: use its targeting already honed in on his own DNA to rip apart the very structure of his cells, implant a poison in his genetic makeup that even the powerful effects of the Source Blood couldn't protect him from. Yes, it might work, but it would be difficult to make on completely fool-proof. Difficult, but not impossible – he is, after all, Nikola Tesla.

When Bigfoot comes to Helen's room to get the dress she had made him promise to bury her in, he immediately picks up on the curtains that have been drawn about her bed. Finding evidence of Nikola's presence in the room does not surprise him, nor does the fact that the vampire makes no acknowledgement of the other's presence. What does surprise him – and he only notices it on the way out, as he is quietly closing the door behind him – is the soft, relaxed sounds of the immortal man's breathing as he sleeps.


	3. Chapter 3

**The End Is Where We Start From**

**Disclaimer: **The angst-whore muse is all mine. Everything you recognise from Sanctuary is not. The title is a quote from the last episode of Torchwood season 2.

**A/N: Sorry this is up so late, guys! I could blame my beta T-man626 for taking forever to get back to me, but that would be mostly a lie. I've been trying **_**desperately **_**to get some work done, which I finally finished today. Also, I'm going to the shore for the weekend, so I'm going to try to post the next chapter in the morning.**

**As a consolation for the lateness, this is a much lighter chapter than the previous ones.**

**FYI: I didn't mean to come off as quite so anti-Henry as it appears I'm being. I swear, it's Nikola, not me. **

**Chapter Three (1403 words)**

Kate comes bearing gifts, but that makes Nikola no more willing to let her in. He doesn't need to be a genius to know that the way the "children" have been simultaneously avoiding him like the plague and sending someone at regular intervals to check on his well-being indicates that they're worried about him. They appear to need some of his spare brilliance; they have no concept of the idea that he is _immortal_ and therefore can't die.

Never mind the fact that he's trying to invent a way to kill himself.

"Please, Nikola, let me in," Kate pleads. The solid, metal door into his lab has been securely bolted shut from the inside, and she knows with the strength of a vampire keeping it shut, she has no chance of getting it open by force.

"No," growls the vampire.

She doesn't want to give up, but she doesn't know how effective her pleading can be when it falls on deaf ears. "At least let me give this to you."

No response comes from within the vault of a lab in front of her.

"It's just an envelope. You don't even have to open the door, just slide back the delivery flap and I'll pass it to you."

Why the lab doors _within_ the Sanctuary needed additional mail slots in the middle of them, with their own lockable sliding metal flaps, was completely beyond her understanding when Kate first arrived. Now, however, they begin to make at least _some_ sense to her – though they still feel extremely redundant.

To her surprise, after a moment's more hesitation, the metal flap slides back. She offers him the envelope, saying, "Please don't lock yourself away in here."

The small window into his private world slams shut in the middle of her talking, but it doesn't faze her.

"We miss her too, you know."

Henry is the next to try to get the vampire out of his shell, but he meets with notably the least success.

"Go away, Wolf-boy," Nikola growls before he can get anything out. "Go play with the rest of the children like a good little Wolf-boy."

Henry lets loose a low growl of his own and shifts into his werewolf form. With all the additional strength he can muster, he slams into the door at top speed.

It doesn't budge.

Clutching his probably-dislocated shoulder, he growls angrily at both the vampire and the reinforced door as he slinks off to the infirmary.

Bigfoot tries each and every day. He doesn't try to get the vampire to speak to him, because he of all people knows how much can be said without a word. He simply tries to provide Nikola with an opportunity to interact with the rest of the team over something that is bothering them all.

Every morning, he leaves the vampire with a bottle of wine, a pint of their unique blood mixture with his medication mixed right in, and an open invitation to re-join the team. Every evening, he replaces the empty bottle with a fresh one and hesitates a moment for the vampire to say something, but he never does.

Each day, he starts again, tries again, and gets no further, but never once does he come close to giving up.

Will is the last to try, but some combination of his timing and persistence pays off better than the others. He knocks on the thick door, not expecting the reinforced steel plating to give way under his touch.

Nikola sits in a corner of his lab, which is a complete and chaotic mess. It's nothing like Nikola's usual organised clutter: Broken pieces of equipment lie in heaps at the bottom of every flat surface. Beakers and test tubes and small microscope slides clutter the floor in heaps as though they've been knocked by an angry hand.

The man in question hunches in the foetal position, clutching a few sheets of paper to his chest. The papers are sodden, crumpled in fists squeezed tight, and held to his breast like a lifeline.

"Nikola?" Will asks softly.

He is expecting a crack about 'Dr Expendable' but nothing comes. When the vampire doesn't respond at all, his worry increases.

Will crouches down in front of Nikola and says his name again.

"Get back," he growls, his vampire side coming out in full force.

Will doesn't falter. The blood bags are empty, and he knows Bigfoot has been infusing them with medication so he has nothing to fear.

"We all miss her," the psychoanalyst says, but he gets no answer. So he tries again: "It's perfectly normal to miss her, but you don't have to suffer through it alone."

In response, Nikola shoves the papers at him, and what Will reads there breaks his heart more than his own letter did.

_My dearest Nikola–_

_We all knew this day would come to pass. I know you, with your brilliant mind, must have known this was coming. I am so very sorry that you were the one of the Five to outlive the rest of us. Out of all of us, perhaps only I truly know how hard you take the death of someone you care deeply about._

_I thank the Gods that have been smiling upon my life so as to allow me that my life has been so intimately intersected with yours. Not a day passes in which I find myself regretting the chance I took in talking to a stranger who was feeding pigeons._

_Longevity may seem a blessing, but it is in many ways a curse. I have seen so many of my friends die, swallowed up by the sands of time, and now, I fear, my time has come to join them. We have always known the Source Blood did not affect my healing. In fact, do you remember those remarkable few days when we believed it had done nothing to any of us? And years had passed before we even __speculated__ that my physiology may have been affected._

_Here I am, over a hundred and fifty, and I still cannot master the simple task of writing a letter which says no more and no less than I want it to. But how do I finally admit to you something I have been denying for as long as I've known you?_

_I love you, Nikola Tesla. I have loved you from our first conversation, from when the most I knew about you was that the pigeons were your closest friends. I loved you even as I was to marry John, but those were the days when a passionate love was unheard of, and you married the man who made you feel safe. John did, until that, too, was shattered, like so much else of the Five._

_You, Nikola, have made these many long years of living worth it. I didn't realise it until you returned, but you have made me happy like only my daughter could. In fact, it is one of my deepest regrets that the two people I loved most never had a chance to meet._

_You make me feel so wonderfully alive that it must be some sort of cruel trick of fate that the only way I have the courage to admit the truth to you is in my death. I am truly very sorry that my courage to speak the words you need to hear comes only when I know the only instance in which you would read this text and learn the truth is if there were no way I would be around to face the consequences._

_I love you, Nikola. I'm sorry that I can leave you my heart only when my life is gone._

_Helen Magus_

"She had so many opportunities to tell me," Nikola says in a broken voice, and tears begin to slip down his cheeks. "_So_ many. I left her every chance – I even told her I loved her."

"That must have been hard for you."

Nikola laughs harshly. "Don't even _pretend_ you understand what I'm feeling, _Huggybear_," the immortal man replies with a cruel-hearted twist of sarcasm.

"We want to _help_ you, Nikola. You aren't suffering this alone."

"Don't," he growls back. He gestures roughly to the door and orders, "Out!"

Leaving the letter on top of a lab table, Will follows his order and shuts the door securely behind him.


	4. Chapter 4

**The End Is Where We Start From**

**Disclaimer: T**he angst-whore muse is all mine. Everything you recognise from Sanctuary is not. The title is a quote from the last episode of Torchwood season 2.

**A/N: I hope you enjoy this one. Helen finally speaks. And I got to write another love-letter! *grins***

**Sorry this is late; internet access is spotty at best and I forgot to upload before I left. I'll be home Monday night, but I go back to school Wednesday...**

**Anyway, please enjoy, and I'm leaving an important note at the end of this chapter, so don't miss it!**

**Chapter Four (2060 words)**

The funeral is a quiet mess.

As if it weren't enough for the Sanctuary Network to lose its head, a violent and destructive abnormal turns up roaming the streets of Old City, followed by a relatively harmless abnormal who is using his ability to weaken the structural integrity of heavy metals to break into bank vaults. Coupled with this is the discovery of a new abnormal species that looks like puffed-up, air-breathing puffer fish, reproduces like Nubbins, and creates a static EM field that causes any and all communication technology operating on usual wavelengths to pick up and broadcast nothing but static.

Will slips quickly and easily into the role of leader, and everyone follows him with a combination of personal respect and the knowledge that Dr Magnus would not have left them in anything less than capable hands. Within moments of each alarm, a group of well-qualified people head off to attack each problem on its own. Such is the demand for resources that, within ten minutes of the first alarm, Nikola finds himself alone with Helen's casket but for an old couple and the hairy butler.

Bigfoot grunts something about needing to set up rooms for the new guests and disappears back to the haven of somewhere he knows well. Nikola couldn't care less about the two old people, holding hands and gazing sadly at the casket while they sit in wooden pews almost as far from Helen's broken body as they can be.

Nikola walks slowly forward, happy, for once, that her people are so anxious to jump on taking care of abnormal issues even in the midst of her funeral. The upper half of Helen's casket is open, like the empty one was for Ashley not that many years ago. This casket, however, is filled with more than simple trinkets by which to remember a lost daughter.

The twice-turned vampire takes one of her hands in his and squeezes tightly. It's near ice cold – but then again, she is, well–

Unwilling to even think the word again, he presses his lips to hers. After the icy chill of her hand, he's surprised to find that her lips don't feel nearly as cold. Perhaps, though, it's simply a matter of his lips being colder. His solution to the problem of lonely immortality should be coming into effect just about now. That's one of the wonders of slow-release poison, coupled with his strength of will. He can look and act perfectly normal until suddenly, the man they had no reason to fear would die is dead.

"This is for you, my love," he whispers softly to Helen's prone form, slipping an envelope with her name on it under the hands resting peacefully on her chest. "It's a response, of sorts, to the one you left me."

He presses another soft kiss to her lips and then to her forehead, and with the last of his strength, he whispers quietly, in her ear, "I'll be seeing you soon."

Then, the twice-turned vampire, immortal and outliving all those around him, collapses in a heap on the stone floor next to Helen's casket.

_My dearest Helen,_ he had written only hours before, when the serum he had derived was already beginning its slow and arduous process towards his death.

_I know you would never approve of my methods, but then, there was so much you seemed not to approve of in regards to my behaviour. And yet, if your letter is to believed, those secretive smiles and hidden glances you thought I didn't see weren't only products of my overactive imagination, as I'm certain you would have claimed had I ever called you out on them._

_Since Rome – and, with your own intellect, I am willing to give you many, many years beyond the ones we've shared since then – you have known my true feelings for you. In Rome, I said it in as many words: I love you. I love you, Helen Magnus, and I always have. It was as much of a leap of faith for me to respond to your questions about my friends the pigeons as it was for you to ask them. Perhaps you never saw it, but I was just as shy as you professed to be. I had no faith that a beautiful young woman like you were could have an honest interest in my affiliation for such simple-minded creatures, and that your words to me came not out of jest but rather of curiosity. I remember that moment clearly, because it so defined our later relationship: it was a leap of faith that opened the door to the most wonderful of possibilities._

_I could never once blame you for your actions in regard to admitting something you felt was difficult. In fact, I'm amazed that you left such a sensitive letter somewhere I might easily find it, if I were ever left the time to pick just two simple locks. But no matter. You knew my love for you; I know your love for me._

_One day, my dear, we will find our happiness together. I love you, and until then I will be with you in whatever way I can manage, even death._

_With all the love in my heart,_

_Nikola Tesla_

"Nikola?" a soft, familiar, and concerned voice asks. "Nikola, can you hear me?"

His eyelids feel like they're made of lead, and internally he lets out a ferocious growl like only his vampiric side can. This was supposed to _work_, dammit, not leave him in a state of paralysis with his overactive mind well at work. It was supposed to _kill _him_._ How hard was it for Nikola Tesla to make an effective vampire poison? He had managed to create a death ray with the technology of the '40s, for goodness' sake!

"Nikola, it's Helen. If you can hear me, I would like you to please open your eyes."

This is more than enough to break the spell of his paralysis. His eyes blink open, and he can practically feel his pupils contracting as he adjusts to the bright, sterile white of the Sanctuary infirmary. He pushes his upper body off the bed with sheer force of will, and the movement causes a prolonged sense of vertigo – something rather remarkable for a vampire. A hand flies to his head, and he rakes it through his hair before immediately regretting the movement. His hair is oily and he can feel the oil sticking all over his hand and he _really_ would love a shower before his hair becomes too monstrous to control, which must be really saying something because he can go for weeks without his hair feeling like this, now that he's back in his vampire form, so–

"How long have I been out?" he asks suddenly.

Helen looks at him sheepishly, and he wonders what he's done wrong. There was a _reason_ he was trying to kill himself, and Helen was involved, and something about admitting things that she wouldn't say easily, but it's all a jumble of confusing half-memories that he can't quite sort out.

"Three weeks," she says softly. "How much do you remember?"

He sits and stares at her lovely face while he's thinking. It's somewhat distracting, because though she blushes under his intent gaze, she doesn't look away. "Do you have anything for me to eat?"

She turns around and grabs a tray with the standard hospital fare on it. Nikola gives it a look like it's poison. With a sigh, she hands him a quart of their blood mixture and a bottle of wine.

"Take it slow–" she begins, but it's futile to continue when he's already gulped down half the blood and taken a long sip of wine. She sighs.

He begins to feel his mental facilities coming back online. He tries to remember what's happened by going backwards, but that yields no results, so he starts from the last thing he _can_ clearly remember. He's speaking aloud, reciting a story that Helen remembers or has heard from her team, remembering more and more of it as he goes along, until he gets to his own "death".

"What I don't get is what happened after that. Or, how you're here. We_ are_ alive, aren't we?"

She grins at him, warmly, smiling like he's silly for expecting that they wouldn't be. "Whose story would you like first," she asks; "Yours or mine?"

"Yours please, love."

She smiles hesitantly, like his kind devotion to her is something she can get used to. "Apparently, my 'longevity' is not as simple as it appears. In your story, you included that in order to get us to safety, you had to feed on me. In the weeks that you've been unconscious, I've been running tests on my blood and yours, and the combination thereof. It appears that your feeding on me, while not enough to turn a normal human into a vampire, was enough to kick-start the preservation ability of the Source Blood in my veins. It was slow to work, but it worked eventually – coincidentally not long after you collapsed."

It's not the most ridiculous thing he's heard in his life. And since he managed to make the most ridiculous thing he ever heard in his life _work_, he's sure this is a suitable explanation.

"And me? Was my poison ineffective?"

Her reaction to his words is strong and startling. He wants to reach out and reassure her that he's here, he won't do that again, and he'll never do anything to purposefully hurt her.

"It was all too effective," she answers quietly. "In the end, I was afraid that I was going to lose you. In the second week, we were close to it. But then, the serum that I made from my own blood managed to bring you back. I've been watching you closely, and you were giving the closest to normal brain activity when I came in earlier."

"You saved me," he says softly. "What is this, three times now?" he jokes, but it's with a remarkably serious undertone that she doesn't miss.

"Only two, you cheeky bugger," she replies.

He grabs one of her hands, which is nearly lying on top of his own. "Thank you," he says simply and honestly.

"You're welcome. Oh, and Nikola?"

A gently teasing smile is playing at the corner of her lips, and he can't help but smile with interest. "Yes?"

"I love you."

_Meanwhile, in a distant place, a young man stands on the edge of a tiny cemetery. This is not his first visit, nor is it his first alone, but something in his heart is coming dangerously close to settling into acceptance at this latest loss, and he has a sinking feeling that this will be his last visit to the cemetery for a long time. It's not that the trip is long, or hard, but the memories are long and hard and painful, and everyday living has enough of them at every turn. When he goes through a day without sensing her in every move he makes, or hearing criticism he's almost ashamed to admit he misses, then and only then will he return to this place, and make sure the memories last._

_For now, however, there are no memories that are not painful, and he's had more than enough suffering for the time being. In order to start a new chapter of life, a chapter with new responsibilities and rules and leadership, he'll have to leave the last chapter of his life here. It was a wonderful part of his life, but it had to end one day. One day, the little boy had to grow up._

_He walks forward, clutching the bouquet of flowers as a lifeline, and navigates the simple cemetery to the only double-wide headstone._

_He wipes away the vines that are threatening to creep up the side of the headstone, and clears off the engraving from dirt. He leaves the bouquet on the ground that is slowly growing grass again and reads the inscription one last time, searching for closure he's scared to admit that he's already found. He had found it when he chose the words to write below their names:_

_Two immortals, fated to love, doomed to die._

**A/N: So, I have a proposition. I am personally a huge fan of ambiguous endings. (Yes, I **_**loved**_** the end of Inception, before you ask.) That being said, in response to this final italicized part, my beta suggested that it would be the perfect opportunity for a twist. Of course, at first I dismissed the idea, regarding it as foolish to impinge upon the lovely ambiguity. However, it was an idea that sprung up in the back of my mind, and I have the beginnings of a deeper explanation. They're only beginnings, and it would probably take me a lot longer to write the rest than it did this, because I had more or less figured out everything I was going to write so far after I had finished a little.**

**So my proposition: Should I continue with this storyline? Or should I leave the ending ambiguous?**


End file.
